This is meant to be the age of the bond vigilante, a time when profligate governments are held to the sword by their financiers and punished with higher interest rates until they show they can get their fiscal house in order.

Here’s a tell-tale sign that global capital is well and truly in retreat – the world’s pre-eminent borrower, the US government, has been confronted by a buyers’ strike as bond yields fall at the same time as the greenback.